A pro-Russian separatist (left) holds a stuffed toy found at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 (top right) while a miner (bottom right) searches a field for debris and human remains near the settlement of Grabovo in the Donetsk region, July 18, 2014. Photo: (Left) Reuters, (top right) Getty Images, (bottom right) Getty Images

A full day after the crash, arriving international investigators were being turned away, including 30 probers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, whose officials told the BBC of being rebuffed by “local illegal armed groups.”

As pieces of the shattered jet continued to smolder Friday, no formal investigation had begun, and the site remained unsecured, except by the occasional Ukrainian rebels in mis-matched uniforms, who patrolled with guns and posed for photos holding children’s toys and other personal effects.

Carry-on bags and backpacks lay open, pillaged by looters.

Untrained civilians — including off-duty coal miners in sooty overalls — combed through the wheat and sunflower fields, which hold scattered wreckage including seats, chunks of fuselage, and charred body parts that remained uncovered.

Administration officials are calling for a thorough probe of the crash, which officials are preliminary blaming on the Russian-backed separatists firing an anti-aircraft missile — a weapon too sophisticated to be fired without some assistance by Moscow, according to USA Today.

“It is vital that no evidence be tampered with in any way and that all potential evidence and remains at the crash site are undisturbed,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Friday.

A pro-Russian separatist stands at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.Photo: Reuters

But despite paying lip service to welcoming an open investigation, Russia and the separatists are continuing to fuel accusations of a cover-up through their conflicting statements concerning their role in the plane’s take-down and in the recovery of its yet-materialized black boxes.

A woman, who said she believed her sister was on Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, cries as she waits for more information about the crashed plane at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.Photo: Reuters

Donetsk separatist leader Aleksandr Borodai claimed Friday that “No black boxes have been found,” and that he hopes the international experts now on the scene “will track them down and create a picture of what has happened,” according to NBC News.

Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, chimed in that Moscow wouldn’t take the black boxes even if they were handed over.

“We are not going to violate those rules that exist in the international community in regard of such cases,” he claimed.

But these denials are in direct contradiction to the rebels’ previous boastings, earlier Friday and on Thursday night, that they had recovered at least one of the two “black box” flight data recorders and that the device would be spirited away to the Russian-run Interstate Aviation Committee, a regional air safety authority.

Belongings of passengers on the site of the crash of the Malaysia Airlines jet.Photo: Getty Images

The black box, which contains cockpit voice and data recordings, could help establish how MH17 was shot down and where the missile was fired from.

Both Moscow and the separatists deny any involvement — and they are blaming Ukraine’s government for causing the instability that led to the armed conflict.

International investigators will keep attempting to begin their grim work at the site.

Malaysia is assembling a group of investigators and humanitarian aides, and the US has offered assistance by the FBI and National Transportation Safety Board, White House officials said.